By Brian Li
China’s infamous Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea celebrated its 70th anniversary in December of 2017. Roughly coinciding with this anniversary was the 2017 the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Da Nang in November. Territorial disputes in the South China Sea still linger among many of APEC’s members, which observers feared might be further exacerbated by the meeting being held in Vietnam, one of the most vocal countries in the dispute. Despite reassurances by the Chinese foreign ministry that the South China Sea dispute would not be on the agenda, and the absence of the issue from the meeting’s concluding declaration, the disputes provided an uncomfortable undercurrent to the APEC meeting, especially after recent ineffective attempts between China and Vietnam to warm up relations in advance of the meeting.
China’s behavior in the South China Sea region is often criticized by regional and western media as reflecting an expansionist agenda, a “manifest destiny” that seeks to trample other developing powers in the region, many of which are allies of the United States. However, it is important to understand that China has its own historical and geopolitical reasoning for its decisions. The Chinese government has defined its territorial claims in the South China Sea by its Nine-Dash Line, which was first created by the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC) in 1947. Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, the ROC government took the liberty of redrawing and consolidating its “lost” territories in the South China Sea based on historical records, publishing a series of documents that outlined its territory in region. This culminated in the Nanhai Zhudao Weizhi Tu map, featuring an eleven-dashed line. Come 1949, the ROC was driven into exile on Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established on the mainland. As a gesture to curry favor with a fellow communist neighbor, the PRC ceded two lines of the original line near the Gulf of Tonkin to Vietnam in 1953, forming a basis for the Nine-Dash Line still peddled by the PRC today. The present claims exercised by the PRC include the Paracel and Pratas Islands in the north, Scarborough Shoal in the east, and, dipping south, the Spratly Islands off the northern coast of Borneo.
Territorial grabs by nations in the region were rare from the late 1940s into the early 1950s, with at one point the entirety of the Spratly Islands being claimed by a single Filipino citizen, Tomas Cloma and his Free Territory of Freedomland. However, by the late 1950s, the PRC and the ROC were able to establish a presence on several key islands in the archipelagos of the South China Sea, with each claim justified by the documents published by the ROC in 1947. The mirroring claims of the PRC and the ROC, as well as shared cultural interests between the two governments, have allowed them to work together in securing their current claims in the region.
While the PRC and the ROC have only recently begun to beef up efforts to assert sovereignty in the South China Sea, the Beijing government has made historical reasons the crux of its argument. In the official position paper released by the foreign ministry, the only justification the PRC offers is based on historical evidence. The PRC has produced navigation maps that indicate Chinese presence in the islands since the Xia Dynasty (2070-1600 BCE), which is supported by archaeological findings in the area. Through the succession of states, one could argue that the PRC has unquestionable sovereignty over the South China Sea. One caveat of using this argument, however, is that international law is largely based on scientific and geographic definitions and largely ignores historical perspectives. However, the foreign ministry notes that historical context is often tied to regional politics and the national consciousness, and any practical solution must take these factors into account in order to render an informed and impartial decision.
However, present-day territorial disputes are not solely based on historical reasons — resource issues may be more relevant. In 1969, the United Nations published a report finding evidence for large oil deposits in the South China Sea. Thus began a scramble for resources in the South China Sea, from the PRC reclaiming the Paracel Islands by force in 1974 to the Philippines striking oil in 1976. With a potential 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under its seabed, the South China Sea has some of the most attractive and lucrative stores of natural resources in the Asia-Pacific. In addition, the South China Sea presents huge trade opportunities. The South China Sea is the shipping gateway of Asia, with the busy Strait of Malacca just off its southwest corner, and an estimated 90% of all Middle Eastern fossil fuel exports to be shipped to Asia via the South China Sea by 2035. With 5.3 trillion dollars of materials moving through the South China Sea each year, shipping routes are the icing on the cake, and it’s no surprise that the various claimants in the South China Sea are eagerly licking their chops.
Perhaps the most striking development in the South China Sea in recent years is the PRC’s ambitious land reclamation projects. These projects have often involved dramatically expanding the size of islands and reefs as well as building airstrips and docks on them. Despite the PRC’s efforts being the most rapidly paced and possibly the largest, the PRC is actually a latecomer to the land reclamation projects. Most if not all claimants in the South China Sea have constructed structures on their islands, with Vietnam most notably rejecting a call from the United States to stop its construction in order to set an example for the PRC. Though the PRC government has described the land reclamation projects as being simply small construction efforts to improve the facilities of military personnel stationed on its islands, it’s clear that recent Chinese expansion, especially in the southern Spratlys, is an effort to box in the region as its own.
The larger Chinese constructions, such as the one on Fiery Cross Reef, actually have facilities to support aircraft as large as bombers. Thus, the PRC actually has a series of “unsinkable aircraft carriers” in the South China Sea, and therefore a permanent presence in the heart of the region. For the United States, it would be costly and inconvenient to maintain fleets permanently in its bases in Japan and South Korea solely to monitor developments in the South China Sea. In this matter, the PRC already has the upper hand strategically, and can, within reason, have its way.
The PRC’s building project only lasted for about three years, from late 2013 to late 2016. Despite international outcry, the PRC persisted, and was able to quickly able to finish the work it had in mind. The United States and its allies were slow to react, and before the United States found a military and diplomatic strategy to counter, the PRC had already finished its work. The end result of this is a new balance of power, now shifted in favor of the PRC. While the United States has continued to sail naval ships and fly airplanes through areas claimed by the PRC, these measures are merely a short-term and reactive posturing. At the end of the day, the PRC stays, and other countries, despite the support of the United States, are coming away empty-handed.
The PRC’s actions have provoked responses from some neighboring states. In early 2013, the Philippines filed a complaint to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, on the grounds that the PRC had violated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The UNCLOS defines territorial features and how they ties into maritime sovereignty rather vaguely, so naturally the UNCLOS would be interpreted by the Philippines in a way that best suited its interests.
The PRC announced that it would not participate in the arbitration, and held throughout the process that the court had no jurisdiction over sovereign rights but rather only over exploitation rights. Furthermore, the PRC accused the Philippines of violating the 2002 China–ASEAN Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, an agreement between the PRC and ASEAN, of which the Philippines is a member. The Chinese interpret the code of conduct as requiring negotiations, rather than arbitration, under all circumstances. The Philippines, however, contended that arbitration was a last resort, due to continued Chinese refusal to participate in serious negotiations, which could also qualify as violating the code of conduct. In response, the PRC invoked Article 298 of UNCLOS, which, it asserted, allowed China to be shielded from any sort of remediation, even if the PCA ruled in favor of the Philippines. In essence, the PRC believed that it couldn’t lose a game it didn’t play. The Permanent Court of Arbitration, however, rejected the PRC’s arguments, claiming jurisdiction over the dispute in late 2015, and ruling in favor of the Philippines in July 2016.
However, it is very important to realize that arbitrations have been ignored in the past. For example, many Chinese analysts cite Nicaragua v. United States, a suit by Nicaragua claiming damages in response to CIA covert operations there. The United States refused to participate in the arbitration, and after losing the case, claimed exemption from any sort of remediation. So, with the PRC similarly refusing to participate in the proceedings of the PCA, it was clear that the proceedings were going to be ineffectual. However, from 2013 to 2016 the PRC also employed the hostile climate created by the Philippines’ suit as cover to formally halt negotiations over the South China Sea, in spite of its reluctance towards diplomacy from the start. In doing so, the PRC gained a time window to aggressively fulfill its agenda. So, the only real outcome from the arbitration was some moderate media attention and statements of support from other nations to pad the Philippines’ case against the PRC. The Chinese government and many pro-PRC commentators have claimed that the three years consumed by the PCA suit were at best an intellectual exercise, and at worst a waste of time.
The net shift in power through several decades of territorial disputes puts the PRC ahead of others in the region. At this point, the PRC is content with what it has gained: a bolstered military presence as well several regional partners that support its claims. Thus, the PRC is able to take on a more leisurely approach to the issue, now promoting diplomatic talks instead of keeping up the brash tone of several years ago. The PRC has become the undisputed power in the South China Sea. While other countries can continue squabbling over territorial rights for the sake of nationalism, more practical and more important to these countries is the maintenance of freedom of navigation and commerce, which now largely rests at the discretion of the PRC.
Sources
Beech, Hannah. “Just Where Exactly Did China Get the South China Sea Nine-Dash
Line From?” Time, 19 July 2016, time.com/4412191/
nine-dash-line-9-south-china-sea/.
Holland, Steve, and Matthew Tostevin. “Trump brings tough trade message in
vision for Asia.” Reuters, 10 Nov. 2017, www.reuters.com/article/
us-trump-asia-vietnam/
trump-brings-tough-trade-message-in-vision-for-asia-idUSKBN1DA0KR.
“Statement of the People’s Republic of China Government on the Territorial
Sovereignty and Maritime Rights in the South China Sea.” Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 12 July 2016,
www.fmprc.gov.cn/nanhai/chn/snhwtlcwj/t1380021.htm.
“China’s Maritime Disputes.” Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/
interactives/
chinas-maritime-disputes?cid=otr-marketing_use-china_sea_InfoGuide#!/
chinas-maritime-disputes?cid=otr-marketing_use-china_sea_InfoGuide
https://cpianalysis.org/2017/03/06/chinas-history-and-the-south-china-sea/
https://amti.csis.org/already-lost-south-china-sea/
https://amti.csis.org/construction-in-the-south-china-sea-a-comparative-view/
https://amti.csis.org/china-responds-to-reclamation-reports/
http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/nanhai/eng/snhwtlcwj_1/t1380615.htm
http://time.com/4400671/philippines-south-china-sea-arbitration-case/